Sukkah 022

נושא: Sukkah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

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[In the case of] someone whose head and torso were in the sukkah but whose table was in the house, the School of Shammai invalidate and the school of Hillel validate. The school of Hillel said to the school of Shammai, "Was there not an occasion when the elders of the school of Shammai and the elders of the school of Hillel went to visit Rabbi Yoḥanan of Ḥoron and found him sitting with his head and torso in the sukkah and his table in the house? — and they said nothing!" The school of Shammai said to them, "Is that your proof? [Well,] they did say to him, 'If that is how you have been doing it [all your life] you have never fulfilled the mitzvah of residing in the sukkah!"

Women, servants and children are excused [the mitzvah] of sukkah. A child that is no longer dependent on its mother must observe sukkah. It once happened that the daughter-in-law of Shammai the Elder gave birth [during Sukkot] and he opened the rafters and put s^ekhakh above her bed because of the baby.

1:
I have combined these two mishnahs because we have already dealt with their content on various occasions so the explanation can be brief.

2:
The first mishnah deals with a maḥloket [difference of opinion] between the two schools of thought and practice within Pharisaic Judaism two thousand years ago. The maḥloket concerns the minimal size of a sukkah, a subject which was dealt with in the first chapter of this tractate. The matter is raised again here because of its connection with 'residing' in the sukkah.

3:
If someone builds a sukkah that is so small that he cannot easily sit down and dine in it it is invalid. In the present case, someone builds a sukkah that is big enough to contain only his head and torso (or what our mishnah calls 'most of him'). The sukkah is so small that there is no room in it for a table. To illustrate the issue our mishnah brings an actual example.

4:
Rabbi Yoḥanan of Ḥoron had built himself a sukkah that could only contain his head and 'most of him'. On one occasion elders from both schools came to pay a visit to this rabbi and found him sitting thus in his sukkah, eating off a table which had to be outside the sukkah. Presumably his thought was that the mitzvah is to eat and drink in the sukkah so as long as he does that while sitting under s^ekhakh he is fulfilling the mitzvah even if the table from which he takes the food is outside the sukkah. But the mitzvah is to 'reside' in the sukkah, to treat the sukkah as our home. We would not build ourselves a house that is so small that it could contain only our head and torso! And even if it were larger, we would not eat inside the house but have the food on an adjacent table outside the house. That is why his visitors spoke harshly to Rabbi Yoḥanan: "If that is how you have been 'residing in the sukkah' all your life you have never fulfilled the mitzvah at all!"

5:
This is one of only six cases in which halakhah was decided according to the view of Bet Shammai rather than Bet Hillel. All six are listed by the Tosafists in their commentary in the Gemara [Sukkah 3a].

6:
We now come to the second of the two mishnahs of our shiur. Many many times over the years we have explained and discussed why women (and Canaanite bondservants and young boys) are excused many (but not all!) mitzvot of the Torah that are positive and time specific. See, for example, Bava Kamma 080, Berakhot 048, 049, 051 and many other places. Very briefly we can say that these people were not required to observe these mitzvot because they were not free agents: they were subject to the rule and authority of their husband/master/father and it would be unthinkable that they should refrain from giving instant obedience because they were 'otherwise occupied' with some ritual observance.

7:
Modern Conservative Judaism has, for the most part, discontinued this discrimination. The reasoning, by and large, has been that tradition excused women from observance of such mitzvot; but excuse does not mean prohibition. If women choose to obligate themselves to observe these mitzvot they are at liberty to do so. A different tack has been that in this modern age the status of women has changed so radically that there is no justification for them to excuse themselves (or be excused) observance of any of the mitzvot. However, this has led to an anomalous situation in which some women observe some of the mitzvot from which they were previously excused (generally mitzvot which confer congregational rites and privileges) but refrain from taking upon themselves other mitzvot. Presumably time will put right this wrong and in the not too distant future both men and women will observe all the observable mitzvot together and equally.

8:
As noted above, boys who are not yet bar-mitzvah are also excused positive time-specific mitzvot. Residing in the sukkah is a perfect example of such a mitzvah: there is no religious significance to taking one's meals in a sukkah during the month of June; the requirement applies only to the seven days of the festival in the month of Tishri. Thus it is positive and time-specific.

9:
Our mishnah teaches that this 'excuse' is valid only until a boy reaches an age when he is no longer completely dependent on his mother. Tradition places this around 5 or 6 years of age. From this age on the child should be encouraged to observe these mitzvot as far as possible as part of his religious education.

10:
Shammai was, as we have mentioned on several occasions, very conservative in his religious views. On one occasion his daughter-in-law gave birth to a son during Sukkot. He immediately removed rafters from the roof above the mother's bed and placed s^ekhakh there so that the baby would not suckle outside the sukkah!

Over the next three weeks, for various personal reasons, these shiurim will be irregular. Please bear with me.

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